Colonel Sutpen

Text: 
Character Key: 
Display Name: 
Colonel Sutpen
Sort Name: 
Sutpen, Colonel
AKA: 
Thomas Sutpen
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Upper Class
Rank: 
Major
Vitality: 
Dies
Family: 
Sutpen
Family (new): 
Occupation: 
Management
Specific Job: 
Plantation Owner; Store Owner
Cause of Death: 
Murder
Real?: 
No
Biography: 

Sutpen is called "Colonel Sutpen" by the narrator (536), "Kernel" by Wash Jones (538), and "Cunnel" by his slaves, but nowhere in the story is he given a first name. When he returns as the central character in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), he is Thomas Sutpen. In both texts Sutpen owns a large plantation in Yoknapatawpha, is a Confederate officer in the Civil War, earning citations from Robert E. Lee, is obsessed with producing a male heir, has a female child with the poor white Milly Jones, and is killed by her grandfather. However, unlike the novel, this story gives no information about Sutpen's pre-Yoknapatawpha biography, nor any reason to question his aristocratic pedigree.

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Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 
Date of Death: 
Monday, January 1, 1872 to Tuesday, December 31, 1872

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